JonathanK

Maybe I'm not understanding issue #1 fully, but can't you just open the wall in question, click on the "Roof" tab, and check "Lower Wall Type if Split by Butting Roof"? Set that as your Interior wall type, and move on down the line...

You can change the different camera elevation defaults to be more "standard" to what you do 80% of the time. But you're right...you cannot have different "types" of wall elevations. The only thing you can do is set your wall elevation default, and create a bunch of different default sets that are what you're looking for. When you pull your wall elevation or exterior elevation, or cross section, then you change your default set in that particular camera view. In reality...probably same amount of clicks.

Here's a snip of the Default Set dialog box that allows you to change the aspects of each Default Set. So essentially you would create new (or use existing) settings for each of these items. They would be custom to whatever Default Set you're wanting.

Would default sets be what you're looking for? You can setup all your presets in there, and when you pull your elevation view, you can select which default set you want that has all of that information setup on the back end.

@VisualDandD, that looks AMAZING! Great job.

Have you tried using a window and switching the type to Louvered. I'm curious if it's the wall, or something else...

Are you talking about a window and making it louvered, or are you talking about a symbol out of the library?

The front to back is definitely a lower pitch than the side to side. If I were to guess I'd say 5:12 and 7:12; possibly 6:12 & 8:12. But you can use what the others mentioned above. We use Hover in our office: https://hover.to/

Made some revisions to my prompt, and been running tests...

Other options I've dabbled in...but haven't spent a ton of time perfecting these.

Yes...you're right, and your picture you posted looks great! Definitely more than one way to skin a cat.

10 years ago, I would dream of creating architectural visualizations that were extremely realistic. I always used Thea and Kerkythea with multiple softwares and importing models and creating textures, etc.. It would take a full night to let it run and in the morning, I'd get in and find that this wasn't quite right, or that wasn't quite right. It was a multi-day task to get one decent image. AI has brought that so much closer...and the more advanced it gets, the better the output. AND the quicker the turnaround. It's quite amazing.

Basically...if you upload a Chief render, and say "Make this more realistic", the AI will take all the stuff and enhance it slightly. But it will mostly just use all your textures, etc... But...if you upload a technical illustration and tell it what you want for materials, backgrounds, etc.. then it finds them and applies that to your illustration. The biggest challenge I ran into was that no matter what I did, it was always too clean and cartoony. The technical illustration shows the differences in the sidings, roofing, stone, etc.. so AI has context. You just need to tell it what you want...and it will fill in the gaps. Think rendering engine, not photo enhancer. It will do the photo enhancement, but if you feel like you're hitting a ceiling, that's the next step.

It's a prompt that I've fine tuned over the last few months. Nothing that anyone wouldn't be able to replicate on their own. It just has a lot of personal preferences and fine tuning/tweaking. But I use Gemini's AI. For the creative space, it's one of the better ones. Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot, etc.. are all not great in the creative sense. They are excellent "companions" or "code writers". But I'm looking for a "rendering engine" more or less...and Gemini excels in that.

@Joe_Carrick, see attached. I just did a screen grab of yours, and ran it through my prompts. Not perfect...but better. Tried to get it to ignore textures, but alas...it just wants to use them no matter what.

This was done with the help of AI. Not perfect, but gets you close.

I have found if you want AI to enhance a picture, it takes your textures and basically just makes them looks somewhat "real". But the problem with that is that a lot of the textures in Chief are poorly tile-able. I would be curious if @Joe_Carrick took a Technical Illustration of the same angle on his cabin, and told AI what materials to use for roofing, siding, trims, background, etc... if it would generate a much more realistic looking render. The scene he posted has a lot of context, which AI needs. But it has too much for textures, etc.. so it basically just makes it look "meh" level realistic.

Touché, my friend!

Yeah...do that

You are most of the way there with what you have. Draw out the stile and rails mitered exactly how you want, and draw panels (with the top being glass). Convert them all to 3D solids, and adjust appropriately in 3D view. When that's done, in your 3D view, go to File>Export>Export 3D Model (3DS). Save the model where you want to that will be easily accessible. From there, go to File>Import>Import 3D Symbol, and locate the symbol you just saved. In the dialog box that pops up, name the symbol whatever you want, and under Category, select "Cabinet Door/Drawer". Make sure Add Symbol to Library is checked, as well as Show Advanced Options. In the Fixture Specification dialog box, the biggest thing here is to go to the 3D tab, rotate your symbol on the X Axis, and also go to the Advanced Sizing tab and set your stretch planes. Find the door in your library, and place them on your cabinets. Should work out good from there.

@Rich_Winsor, I thought you were going to post something like this for the recommendation on realistic people...

I've been strictly using Gemini. I've gone through a few prompts, but to me this is like handing out your Chief Architect template with all your settings ready to rip. I have found that if I treat Gemini as a rendering engine, I have far better results and far more realistic pictures. So I will upload a technical illustration of a drawing, and my prompt tells Gemini to ask me what to use for siding, stone, background, etc... The biggest hangup is driveways and parking lots. Even with specifying where they go, AI lacks context, so it gets a little weird at times.

I've been using Gemini with quite a bit of success...as long as you're ok with some wiggle room on staging, etc... I've dialed my prompt in and made it so that it will give me consistent results...within tolerance. It still gets a wild hair once in awhile...but it's all good. But it's the best at keeping the integrity of the picture, but enhancing the overall feel. I like it, anyways...

Castleview was Kathleen Moore, I think... We did a lot of work together with Kerkythea and Thea back when rendering was more difficult.

The reason I thought it signified manual newel posts is because on one trial run, when I switched it to manual...they changed to yellow. I think the CAD block for that newel post was generated by Chief. I can create a custom and see if it works better.